Amnar Prompt Bonus: What is the most common cause of death in your world? 🎆Usually, these are subscriber-only, but I decided to make this one available to everyone, because it summarises the way Amnar works as a society. This might be the easiest one to answer from this week's prompt selection. For full disclosure, I had four questions from this week'
52 Weeks of Editing 52 Weeks of Writing: Week 32—Tracking Words Between Nanowrimo Months I've tried to start this week's post three times. Maybe five. I'm no good at this whole blogging thing. I have no idea how to do it in 2023, when things have moved on from the days of Open Diary and just writing whatever
52 Weeks of Editing 52 Weeks of Writing: Week 31—What Matters In Storytelling As Demonstrated By Penguins Let's talk about penguins. Specifically, let's talk about how penguins can help us learn about how to write good, compelling story structure.
52 Weeks of Editing 52 Weeks of Writing: Week 30—My therapist told me to do this. I'm writing this in bed, on a warm Friday afternoon, and I feel like bursting into tears. Maximum menstrual potential unfolding here. For a week I had a fever. As the fever died, the period struck. My cat and I have so far spent most of today in
52 Weeks of Editing 52 Weeks of Writing: Week 29—How to make a necromantic skull Introduction You know when you get that pre-cold feeling? Hmm, yeah. That's how I'm feeling today. It's been an incredible week with my family and friends. But graduation day is a strange thing. Six years of work preparing for the PhD and doing the
52 Weeks of Editing 52 Weeks of Writing: Week 28—A word about pronouns Intro Well, it's been a week. A real week. I've had so many different things going on, things I didn't really want to have to deal with the week before I graduate. I've been a tad stressed out, let's put
52 Weeks of Editing 52 Weeks of Writing: Week 27—Camp Nanowrimo Week 1 Introduction It's Camp Nanowrimo. Back in April, I did a whole 50k words, so I decided to set that as my goal for this summer camp. Except that once again, I've shifted gear and I'm writing the much earlier Amnar book. That'd
52 Weeks of Editing 52 Weeks of Writing: Week 26—Signs, silence, and letters to supernatural agents Introduction Technically speaking, this is halfway through my "52 Weeks of Doing Something That Might Be Writing" project. It's also the end of June and tomorrow is the start of Camp Nanowrimo. Once again, I'm veering all over the place here. I am doing
52 Weeks of Editing 52 Weeks of Writing: Week 25—A pot is never "just" a pot Last week, I decided I would change how I do these weekly reviews. Forget inspirational quotes and reports on monthly goals. Forget focus and how well it went. I'm sick of trying to fit myself into the grindset mentality as though that was the only thing that mattered.
52 Weeks of Editing 52 Weeks of Writing: Week 24—Life is more than this. Confessional time. I need to hold my hands up and be honest. I haven't written any fiction in a month, maybe more. I'm struggling with it again. Some of this makes sense; the last month or so has been chaotic and crazy and it's
52 Weeks of Editing 52 Weeks of Writing: Week 23—Marking zombie edition Wow, what a week. I'm writing this a day late again because I had to recover from autistic burnout yesterday. I'll explain in the accomplishment section, but we're in the last days of marking season and I needed to get all my papers done
52 Weeks of Editing 52 Weeks of Writing: Week 22—This is the week I got my PhD again Okay, so that was a week. Again, I have to hold my hands up right at the outset and admit that I haven't done any fiction writing this week. In fact, I've barely done any writing, other than journaling. I've maintained my streak on
52 Weeks of Editing Featured 52 Weeks of Writing: Week 21—This is the week I got my second PhD This has been an enormous week for me. A weekly review doesn't feel like enough, somehow, given that this was such an important moment in my life. I was awarded my PhD. I can't find the right words to describe it. Technically, I've been
52 Weeks of Editing 52 Weeks of Writing: Week 20—Facing procrastination with the help of AI (part two) Wow, where did that week go? Here we are again for another review, and finally I get to stick a bit of a word count goal up there because I actually did some writing. This post will therefore not be all about me whinging about health issues. I have new,
52 Weeks of Editing 52 Weeks of Writing: Week 19—Facing Procrastination with the Help of AI (part one) Because I'm still in the middle of a major health crisis, I need to lean on something highly controversial for help. My therapist knows I like to journal, so she recommended I try some AI prompts. The AI provides me with feedback on the answers I give, which
52 Weeks of Editing 52 Weeks of Writing: Week 18—It gets harder Word count: 50–52k (10k to the mid-point break) Well, it's been a week. There's something about writing: it never happens in a vacuum. We have to write while we have kids or pets or colleagues or partners all around us. As much as you try
52 Weeks of Editing 52 Weeks of Writing (!): Week 17—Writing even when it's hard Camp Nanowrimo 2023/1: Week 4 Words: 45–50.8k I'm not normally a proponent of the idea of writing even when it's hard. In fact, I prefer the idea of not writing when it's extremely hard, but it depends what you mean by
52 Weeks of Editing 52 Weeks of Editing (Writing?): Week 16—We need to talk about the perimenopause I'm beginning to think I need to call this "52 Weeks of Writing" rather than editing. I couldn't find any way to do strikethrough text in the title (or anywhere else on Ghost), so if you could just imagine I managed a snazzy title
52 Weeks of Editing 52 Weeks of Editing: Week 15—When the Depression Monster Calls I'm late! I'm late! Here I am, a day late, rushing in like the White Rabbit, all flustered and confused. Let me tell you, it's been a week. For reasons I'll explain below, I couldn't write the blog update yesterday.
52 Weeks of Editing 52 Weeks of Editing: Week 14—Camp Nanowrimo Week 1 Wow, here we go. It's Day 7 of Camp Nanowrimo 2023, and I'm actually writing. Not only that, but I've broken through the slump of the last few years. The writer's block I spent the first few weeks of this project discussing
52 Weeks of Editing 52 Weeks of Editing: Week 12—First Three Months Review I think it's time to do a review. This is the last Friday of March, so I've been doing this project for three whole months (give or take a few days). I figured it might be useful to look back over what I've done
Amnar 52 Weeks of Editing: Week 11—Busting Through The Writer's Block This is more of a journal than a proper blog post. This week has been extra, that's all I'm going to say. I come to you now, exhausted and wishing I didn't still have a blog entry to write about editing Amnar. I mean,
Amnar 52 Weeks of Editing: Week 10—The One-Year Anniversary of Being Diagnosed Autistic, Brought To You By A Battle In A Forest I write to you now from the middle of a battle. Somewhere deep in a forest, I'm pitted against some awesome monster, a creature of green feathers and red face, wings flapping. The creature demands that I write 700 words in just over two hours, although at the
52 Weeks of Editing 52 Weeks of Editing: Week 9—Six Steps to a Process for Managing Writer's Block (i.e., it was a good week) Oh, at last! A good week. It feels a little dangerous to say that, as if the gods will notice and dump something awful on me. But even at a time when eggs and vegetables are rarer than dodos, wearing every hoodie I own during a cold snap is more